


in throats, between teeth

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brief abuse mentions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:52:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3565298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gracie and Helena try to learn to be real people, and attempt to navigate this strange thing called friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my second chaptered fic! (!!!) I haven't decided whether I'll be updating once or twice a week, so...keep an eye out, I guess. 
> 
> This is set in an alternate universe that is lacking clones.

Gracie sees the serial killer on the news for the first time on her first day in the city. It’s not the most auspicious beginning – good job finally managing to get out of your house, Gracie, good job getting away from your family, here’s a reminder that you’re _never_ going to make it on your own. Girls like you get eaten up by the big hungry mouth of the city, go back to your farm, go back to your father’s belt and your mother’s false tight smiles and forget about it, forget about it, forget about it—

Instead she clicks her tiny, bargain-basement television to another channel and does. Forget about it.

She’s not going back, not _ever_ ; this is her big chance to make it out of her life before and make something of herself. She’s going to take it. She doesn’t have a choice.

So every morning she eats her breakfast under the watchful gaze of her apartment’s sad, flickering lights, she puts on her boots, she grabs her bag, and she walks to work. Works eight hours, comes home, plugs away at the online college courses she’s taking until she falls asleep. Rinse. Repeat.

It’s a life. Honestly, Gracie’s barely bothered by the torn-open body on the news, the viscera, the sort of – _botched_ nature of it, honestly.

(Gracie could probably do better; there’s a reason she’s majoring in biology.)

The body, the bright colors, the sensationalism – it’s too real for her. If she were going to paint her life she’d use the sad pale color of the fluorescent light, the way it washes out her hair in the bathroom into something – less than red.

(Her father used to compliment her hair with a low chuckle and her mother would brush it, eighty strokes, a hundred—)

So. It’s not a problem. Really. Gracie just avoids the news channels, that’s all.

There are things you can’t avoid, though: Gracie learns that suddenly and all at once, with the speed of a knife to the throat in a back alley.

Rewind. The day is the same as the day before, initially – breakfast, boots, bag. She trades one flickering fluorescent light for another, works her shift; it isn’t until it’s almost over that the girl after her comes running up, jabbering about family problems (some nasty thing in Gracie hisses some nasty hiss, _what do you know about family problems_ , but Gracie is very good at ignoring things like that) (really), _Gracie can you take my shift_ , and Gracie has always been a pushover and Gracie says _alright_.

By the time she gets out, it is dark as dark, the sort of night that makes you wrap your jacket around yourself and walk fast.

So Gracie wraps her jacket around herself, walks fast, doesn’t look where she’s going—

And then there is a knife.

And then there is a knife, tucked sweetly against the curve of her chin, and stubble grating against her face, and a low voice rasping, “Hand over the purse, sweetheart, and no one gets hurt.”

Gracie freezes, the way she always does when she’s (locked in the basement for hours) (her father’s backhand) (her mother screaming a high hysterical note) afraid; it’s a dangerous habit but she’s thinking about the keys in her purse and how she can’t afford another set and—

There’s a loud _crack_ and the weight on Gracie’s neck is released; the knife skitters against the skin of her throat (sacrificial lamb) (shut _up_ , she thinks hysterically) as the man falls down and then there’s blood on her skin, red as her hair.

She almost falls over but she catches herself in time, spins, sees:

The body of the man holding her on the ground. In unconsciousness, he looks smaller – there’s a lump on his temple that’s going to develop into something incredibly nasty. He deserves a lot worse.

Behind him is Gracie’s erstwhile savior: a small, huddled mass of a woman, swallowed up by the frizzy explosion of her hair and the enormous green parka she’s swaddled in like a child. She’s looking at Gracie with a sort of dead curiosity, like a shark might look at a wreck at the bottom of the ocean.

“Are you alright?” she asks, her head tilting to the side like faulty machinery, and Gracie takes a second to wonder at her accent – Eastern European? the city is _strange_ – before nodding, sharply, and saying, “Yes. Um. Thank you, for—”

She stops, abruptly. The blonde shifts from foot to foot uncertainly; something in her seems to be aching for flight. Gracie doesn’t quite know what to say. Adrenaline pounds in her chest like fists, and something in this moment seems too achingly _real_ to breathe.

“You’re bleeding,” says the other woman in the alleyway, quietly, and Gracie dabs at her neck, looks at her fingers, says “Yes” again. She might be in shock.

“I might be in shock,” she says calmly, and then adds “sorry” to the end of it, because if there’s one thing her father taught her, it was to _be polite_ —

Oh, now she’s crying. Or laughing, possibly? She really wants to curl up on the ground and go to sleep, but the blonde woman’s eyeing her, eyeing the body on the ground, and making short twitchy movements; then her arms are wrapped around Gracie and she is saying “Sssshhh,” repeatedly, like Gracie’s a _child_.

She smells like metal and Gracie buries her face unthinkingly into the cloud of blonde hair. “I’m usually better than this,” she says through the middle of her choking, gulping hiccups, and her companion just hums, the sound deep and vibrating in her chest. Slowly Gracie calms; she remembers rubbing the soft velvet of a cow’s muzzle, remembers the idea of soothing.

“Do you have somewhere to go,” says the shorter woman, somberly, releasing Gracie from the embrace – not that she misses it, even though it’s the first time someone’s touched her in months – and Gracie says, “I have an apartment.”

“I will walk you to there,” says the blonde, and Gracie doesn’t even think of arguing, just says “Okay” numbly. They turn and walk in a strangely companionable silence away from the unconscious man on the ground.

“My name is Helena,” says the – Helena. Says Helena.

“I’m – Grace,” says Gracie, biting off the last syllable for reasons she doesn’t know. She likes the way it sounds, though, almost like a different person. _Grace_. Grace could be whoever she wants to be. Grace gets saved in back alleys by Ukrainian women named Helena. Gracie likes her; she kind of wishes Grace would speak up a little bit, though.

“Grace,” murmurs Helena, “amen,” and that’s the last she says until they reach Gracie’s building and she realizes, suddenly, that she’s escorted an absolute stranger with a tendency to use violence _straight to her front door_.

She whirls in front of the door, key out of her purse and clutched between her fingers, like claws – Helena looks at it and the corner of her mouth twitches up-down again in one rapid movement – and says (in a voice uncomfortably high) “This is where I live. So. Thank you, again.”

Helena’s shoulder rises and falls like a wave, and she mutters, “Those men, they are…bad. Like buzzards.” Then she tries something that’s almost a smile and says “Good night, Grace.”

Gracie thinks of saying something, but Helena’s already turned around and left, swallowed up in the night’s mouth until she is gone. Devoured.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We do have an update schedule now! Wednesdays and Saturdays. :)
> 
> Thanks for all your comments and love so far, by the way! I appreciate it! I love you all!

When Gracie wakes up the next morning, part of her is convinced she dreamed everything. Standing under the cold, inconsistent spray of her shower, it is difficult to believe in chance encounters, back-alley muggings, Eastern European women with animal metaphors – but no, there’s a light scratch on her neck and residual shaking in her hands.

Not a dream, then. Real.

Maybe the most real thing Gracie’s seen in – well.

If she spends the walk to work with held breath and her entire shift looking out the window, jumping every time someone walks by…that’s her business. And if there’s nothing to see out the window, on the walk to work, on the walk from work, that’s someone else’s business, isn’t it? Not Gracie’s. Just. Forget about it.

She can’t, though. She keeps thinking about it. It’s not like she has anything else to do – watch television, study some line of text that makes her eyes hurt, make herself meals and eat them alone, paste on fake smiles and faker small talk at work.

She goes through a hollow routine and thinks about that night over and over, rewrites the story in her head so she’s braver, so she’s cleverer, so that she’s _deserving_. She hates herself, a little, for doing it, but again: what else is she going to do, but sit and wait?

And in the end that is enough. Her waiting ends as she’s locking up one night – early, early, because she has always lived a life shaped around the edges by fear but now the fear has bitten chunks out of her. The world is not safe, she _knows_ , but she wakes up in the middle of the night shaking and pleading for mercy to someone who isn’t there and men are waiting for her in back alleys and the newscasters told her in their solemn voices that another body has been found, somewhere out there is a serial killer, and Gracie feels relief like a bullet in the chest when she locks up and sees a smear of gold hair in the reflection of the window.

When she turns around, Helena is in the mouth of the alley behind her like she has been there the whole time. Like she has been waiting, for Gracie to turn and see her.

“Grace,” she says, and Gracie says “Helena,” noticing that her voice doesn’t shake, feeling obscenely proud of that one small thing. She takes a moment to look at the other woman – still small, trembling slightly even though it is not that cold and she’s wearing that same green coat.

Gracie wonders if she’s _bathed_. Then she’s immediately irritated with herself for wondering and says, “It’s – good to see you again.”

“Yes,” says Helena; she rolls her lips between her teeth, and her eyes dart around like she is looking for escape routes, from this, from something. “I—” she begins. “I did not see you, and I thought you were…”

She trails off, looks at Gracie, wounded. Gracie takes one step away from the door, two steps, three. Her hands are tight around the strap of her bag. She feels a desperate urge to prove herself, prove something.

“I usually don’t work that late,” she says instead – blurts, really, the words tripping over themselves to fall out of her mouth and break their necks. “So I’ve been fine.”

“Thank you, for…” she tries, and trails off. They stand awkwardly in silence, and then Helena says, soft and solemn, “It is dangerous, here.” Her eyes dart to and from Gracie’s, like a moth considering the suicide of light. “I can – walk with you again.”

“I’d like that,” says Gracie, equally soft, equally solemn. A smile makes its sickly way across Helena’s face and she steps a few backwards paces into the alley, waiting for Gracie to catch up.

It’s not a long walk, and Gracie isn’t sure what is safe to talk about, what she can say to this person she barely knows. But she thinks about _Grace_ , who is not Gracie, and when enough time has passed for her to work up some sort of nerve she says, “I’m new to the city.”

“New,” says Helena, and Gracie shrugs a shoulder, says, “I just moved here a few—” and she suddenly realizes she doesn’t want to know how many days it’s been, how many days she’s wasted, and so she trails off with a wilted “…recently.”

“I am also new,” Helena says conversationally; she’s trailing a hand along the wall as they walk (Gracie’s are still clutched, foolishly, around the strap of her bag) and she turns from her idle contemplation of the bricks to look at Gracie.

“We are both strangers,” she says, and Gracie ducks her head, feeling uncomfortably exposed.

“You don’t seem like it, though,” she says quickly, “you’re…you’re very brave.”

“Brave,” Helena murmurs, and says, “not really.”

By that time they’ve reached the door to Gracie’s building; Gracie puts it at her back, a closed and patient mouth, and looks at Helena, and says “You saved my life.”

Helena looks away and her mouth does that same up-down smile, like she’s laughing at a joke Gracie doesn’t quite get. As if there’s something funny, about the idea of Helena saving lives. But she doesn’t explain the joke to Gracie; instead the smile twists into something softer, and Helena says, “I hope you are happy here.”

Gracie doesn’t know what lie to tell. Instead she hardens her gaze into something like a challenge, for reasons she doesn’t even know, and says “I hope you are too.”

Helena hums. Says “Good night, Grace.” Turns and walks and walks and walks until what she has walked to is _away_.

Gracie turns to unlock her door and allows herself one second to smile. Then she opens the door, and lets herself in.

* * *

It becomes, impossibly, a sort of routine; Gracie finds herself thinking of bits of media she’s gotten her hands on, boys taking girls’ books and walking them home from school. Then she stops thinking about that, because Helena isn’t a boy, she’s—

Well, not a boy. But besides that…Gracie knows very little about what she is at all. She has (they have) a routine, of a sorts, but it’s not a long walk and there are certain subjects Gracie avoids like the plague, like anything about who she is, like anything about who raised her. Helena seems happy enough to avoid talking about family – or anything about herself, really, which is why Gracie knows so little.

The things she knows are strange, like a keepsake box: a penny, a rock, a photograph, a ticket stub. Helena was raised in a convent, in Ukraine. Her favorite season is fall; she likes Halloween, when children are out in the streets. She likes candy. Gracie doesn’t know where she lives, if she lives somewhere – Helena’s coat is zipped up all the way, and she doesn’t look any more or less hungry, more or less clean, more or less tired any time Gracie sees her. Gracie knows very little.

She doesn’t even know if they’re friends.

Are they friends? Is this a thing that happens to people? Gracie is fairly certain this is not a thing that happens to _anyone_ , and so she doesn’t question it; her walks with Helena, the bare minutes out of her day, have the seeming fragility of a soap bubble. She is afraid to touch.

* * *

They’ve reached Gracie’s door again and Helena’s finishing some rare story, something vague about camping – Gracie doesn’t know, and she’s pretty sure the details change every time her attention wavers. Might have been a truck. Might have been a tent. There might have been someone else there; there might not have.

Gracie thinks she likes it, and the way it doesn’t quite make sense.

But they’ve reached Gracie’s door. Gracie’s actually not sure Helena’s noticed; something about her has pulled into herself, and her eyes are glassy as she murmurs a continuous high-pitched stream, “he tried to get off of the truck and then stepped right in—”

Helena looks up, grins excitedly; her eyes spark with some sort of feverish light as she waits for Gracie to catch up. Then she notices Gracie looking back at her; Gracie watches Helena’s eyes flick-flick-flick, Gracie-door-away, as things string themselves into chains of significance in Helena’s brain.

“I’m sorry,” she says, once she’s figured it out, backing away from Gracie like a beaten animal.

“It’s okay,” Gracie says, unintentionally sharp, and her hand leaps out without her say-so; she manages to stop herself from grabbing Helena’s wrist, so her arm dangles between the two of them like a dead thing. Helena eyes it with a familiar sort of loathing that says she is all too familiar with dead things and, slowly, Gracie pulls her hand back. It dangles limp at her side.

“You can come in,” she says, sounding bolder than she feels, sounding more _Grace_ and less _Gracie_. “If you want.”

There’s a pause that could be a wound, but Gracie fills it with “I’d like to hear the end of your story.” She tries a smile. It comes out soft and sticky on her face, but she _has_ seen Helena try and smile. So.

Helena eyes her. Gracie thinks again of animals; slowly, she turns her back on Helena long enough to open the door, some instinctive sign of trust, safety, something along those lines. Behind her she hears absolutely nothing, not even breathing.

For one second – one that fills her with a beautiful, shattered clarity, like the pain of being cut with broken glass – she is absolutely certain Helena is going to stab her. She doesn’t know why, only that the animal part of her brain is uncurling and keening and snapping its jaws with a constant hollow sound. She is going to _die_.

Of course she doesn’t. By the time she’s opened the door the fear has vanished, and she’s almost forgotten she was afraid at all.

“So?” she says, holding the door open and turning her head so she can see the lonely figure of Helena in the dark. “Are you coming?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [warning: allusions to abuse]

Helena’s feet in their boots make loud clanging sounds as she walks up the stairs; besides that, the walk is silent. Regret is flooding Gracie’s throat like bile, but it’s too late to send Helena back downstairs – besides, she can’t lose this. This stranger is all she has, now, everything in the world. She’s not going to send Helena back into the dark, with her story trapped in her mouth, her mouth stitched shut. She’s not going to.

She doesn’t turn around the whole walk up, straightens her shoulders, shapes herself into _Grace_ , who probably does this sort of thing all the time.

This lasts until she opens the door, turns on the lights, and – her stomach lets out a long, hungry growl.

Very loudly.

Gracie ducks her head for a second and considers burying herself underground…then Helena _laughs_.

It’s an awkward sound, stunted, rusty, but once Helena starts she keeps going and then Gracie starts laughing and the silence collapses in on itself like a house of cards. Helena grins at her in a slash of white teeth and says “You should eat,” lightly.

Gracie considers the leftovers in the fridge and says back, “There’s enough for two, if you want some.”

Helena’s lightness slips from her face, for a second, and Gracie sees something aching and hungry and lonely in the depths of Helena’s eyes before the blonde woman blinks and it is gone. She shrugs, carelessly, and says, “If you are so eager to give it away.”

But despite the carelessness, she doesn’t sit down, only stands in the middle of the room _looking_ at everything. It makes Gracie faintly embarrassed, so she starts heating up the leftovers in two bowls.

(She didn’t even know she _had_ two bowls.)

Helena wanders over; Gracie can feel the weight of Helena’s eyes on her, finds the solidity comforting. “You were saying something,” she says, “earlier, about – a man? He stepped in _something_.”

Helena hums, leans her weight on the counter next to Gracie, rolls her lips between her teeth. “It is not very interesting,” she says. “He stepped in dung. Screamed like a little baby.” She puts on an affected falsetto, continues, “Oh, no, I have ruined my boots. I swear, S—”

There’s a short sharp pause, just a blink, almost enough for Gracie to miss, and Helena’s voice twitches back to normal.

“Helena,” she finishes, the word raw as a lie in her mouth.

“He was angry,” she mutters, “but he got over it.” The last words rattle out like a factory line, just as much a lie as _Helena_ ; Gracie can’t help feeling that the whole thing sounds like a recitation. Maybe that’s just how Helena talks. It makes sense, doesn’t it? To Gracie Helena’s entire life might as well be a story. To Helena, maybe it is the same: a life that is a loose collection of stories, like teeth in a bowl. That bite.

Gracie’s microwave lets out a shrill, annoyed beep, jostling her out of her thought. Helena twitches like she’s been shocked; both of their gazes flicker to the microwave at the same time. A question settles at the tip of Gracie’s tongue, and it has the word _father_ in it, and it has the word _mother_. But she can’t, she can’t, so instead she opens the microwave, grabs the first bowl, puts it on the table. When she is a whirlwind of motion she does not have to look at the ghost standing in the middle of the room.

“There’s forks in the drawer,” she says, teetering on the edge of sharp. “Grab two, please?”

(Her mother scrapes the edge of her words like a knife, like nails on a chalkboard. In. Out. Not now.)

Helena does so and they settle at Gracie’s small, cheap little table. Instinct screams _say grace_ , but Gracie pulls the _g_ up, capitalizes it, shouts _Grace_ in her mind like a battle cry. Starts picking at her food.

She’s eaten a few bites, when she looks up; across from her, Helena is shoveling the food in her mouth like she has not eaten in weeks. Like she’s starving. Something in Gracie’s chest does a raw sort of flip, watching the woman across from her hunch over the bowl and eat (and eat, and eat). She can’t imagine not eating slowly, delicately. She can’t – she can’t imagine, needing to eat like that.

Helena seems to sense that she’s being watched, and she looks up in a sharp crack of her neck to meet Gracie’s eyes. There’s an obscene slurping sound as she pulls the fork out of her mouth. Her head falls to one side, and she taps the fork once-twice against her lower lip. There is something of an animal in her.

Gracie realizes she’s staring, ducks her head down to look at her own bowl. Suddenly she doesn’t feel very hungry.

“You can have mine,” she murmurs, “here,” and she shoves the bowl across the table. Helena makes a suilline grunt and begins to shovel that in, too. The second bowl takes less time; Helena flicks her tongue around her mouth, satisfied, and then burps.

“Excuse me,” she says, and she tucks the animal neatly back under her skin, and she is just Helena again: small and faded like a photograph on the other side of Gracie’s table.

“You’re excused,” Gracie murmurs back, the words hollow and habitual.

They stare at each other for a second and then Helena smiles, the shape of it a sister to fondness. “Thank you,” she says, words fumbling in her mouth, “for having me. I don’t—”

She pauses, for a second, looks vaguely annoyed with herself. Underneath Gracie’s table Helena’s fingers curl and uncurl on her leg, like violence.

“I don’t – have – a family,” she says, in short sharp bursts. “Not really.”

“There is no one to give me their leftovers,” she finishes softly, smiles again – still, still, not as soft as it could be. Still a little dangerous. “I am glad, that I could help you.”

“Me too,” Gracie blurts, relieved to have a place in the conversation. “I mean – I’m grateful.” She swallows. “And – I don’t – I don’t have a family either.”

“We could be each other’s,” she says, soft, watches the words hover in the air between them like dust. “Sisters.”

“ _No_ ,” roars Helena, and her hands slam on the table and Gracie is sent into a riot of memory again, collapses in on herself instinctively as a tent does. If she stays very still she won’t be hurt by the anger in Helena’s eyes, those twitching fingers, if she doesn’t breathe she won’t be—

“I’m sorry,” Helena says. “I am – I am sorry, Grace, I did not mean—”

She reaches across the table and wraps her hand around Gracie’s own, and it’s just Helena’s hand, feeling like Gracie somehow knew it would – rough, calloused, but warm. Small and warm in her hand. They’re in Gracie’s apartment, and she is alright, and Helena didn’t hurt her, and she can stop shaking now, really.

“We could make a family,” says Helena earnestly. She has not let go of Gracie’s hand. “We could be – brothers.”

“Not sisters,” Gracie breathes, and Helena shakes her head, swallows, says, “Not that.”

There is despair settling heavy over the table like a lead blanket; Gracie twists her hand in Helena’s so that she can shake it, awkwardly bouncing her elbow off the table as she does. “Brothers, then,” she says, voice slightly shrill. “Can I call you _Brother Helena_?”

“I am not a priest!” Helena says, words shattering with giggles. “In Ukrainian, is _brat, brata._ You are _brat_ Gracie.” She pauses, says it again, words heavy with the joke. “ _Brat_.”

“ _You’re_ a brat,” says Gracie; she lets go of Helena’s hand to stand up, feels the loss of it. (It has been a long time, since someone has held her hand.) (Not that it matters.) Helena giggles in a low growling sound at the table, and with that sound in the background Gracie’s apartment seems warm, suddenly, and inviting.

“Come on, Helena brat,” she says, “help me wash the dishes.”

Helena unfolds herself from behind the table, grabs her bowl, knocks her side against Gracie’s and walks towards the sink. A few steps in she turns around and beams at Gracie, her teeth white in her mouth, and Gracie thought she’d forgotten how to smile but she’s smiling back.

She’d always wanted a sister, she thinks, swallowing down a lump in her throat as she goes to put her bowl in the sink – but a brother, a brother, maybe that’s good too.

They clean the dishes, and Helena starts drifting towards the door – for some reason Gracie wants to say _stay_ , like now that they’ve shaken hands across a plastic tabletop, sworn themselves brothers, they can pretend that they have a whole life as family to spend together.

Instead she blurts, “Be careful,” as Helena moves towards the door. Helena turns to look at her with wide sad eyes (has anyone said that to Helena, in her life? Gracie doesn’t know) and Gracie feels the need to justify herself.

“There’s a serial killer,” she says, sharp, “I saw, on the news, and – I know you’re alright with men stealing purses but – be careful.”

Helena looks at her for a second, considering, and then from the pocket of her parka she pulls out a switchblade. 

The image is very strange, Helena with a switchblade – not the weapon, actually. Gracie is surprised with how natural Helena looks with a weapon in her hand, how her mind accepts it. What stands out is the blade: it doesn’t look like something Helena would hold, looks like it belongs to the sort of person who wears combat boots and smears yesterday’s eyeliner like warpaint. It doesn’t fit Helena, who mostly just looks hungry.

But before Gracie can consider that too closely the knife has been eaten by Helena’s pocket, and Helena has a smile on her face.

“I will be alright,” she says. “I promise.”

She leaves, out the door and out of Gracie’s life again, and all Gracie can do is watch her go and hope. All she can do is hope that Helena comes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how many of you have stuck around, but thank you if you are still reading this! It means a lot. :)


	4. Chapter 4

Gracie doesn’t see Helena the next day at all, and she can’t help thinking that something has happened to her – it’s like when the stray cat at your doorstep suddenly vanishes, except Helena isn’t a cat at all. Helena is Gracie’s family, and when Gracie locks the door behind her after work and doesn’t see Helena in the alley mouth she realizes she has no way of knowing where Helena is going to be. She doesn’t know how she can make her stay.

Which is ridiculous. It’s only been a day, but – what is a day, for the two of them? A long time. Longer than any time Gracie has spent alone, and last night Helena hummed while washing the dishes and stood close enough to Gracie to let her head rest, for a second, on Gracie’s shoulder. Then she left. Eaten alive by the dark, she left. The fear that Gracie keeps bottled up tight in her chest is leaking into her bloodstream, saying: _she’s dead_ , saying: _she’s gone forever, she’s dead_. Gracie almost hopes Helena left, because the alternative is difficult to think about – that she – all that blood, and she—

_She left_ , she tells herself all the way home, hoping the repetition of it will cement it as fact, hoping cementing it as fact will make it hurt less. _She left, because she realized she didn’t want_ you _as her family, and she’s not coming back_.

All the way up the stairs and into her apartment and then she stops, and begins to cry. Stupid! Stupid Gracie, sitting crumpled in a pile on the edge of her couch like a dropped thing. Like something abandoned, a puppet whose strings were cut and not one who took years to work up the urge to work her hands around the scissors herself. But now that someone has come into her apartment and laughed there she realizes how empty the apartment was in the first place, and she is beginning to feel like she has something to lose and now she has lost it and—

There’s a knock on the door.

Actually, there’s several dull thuds, but Gracie’s going to count it. She doesn’t even look through the peephole, just opens the door blindly. Later she’ll remember that she thought about the knife in the kitchen drawer, the serial killer on the news, all the places sharp elbows could go.

She doesn’t think about that. She isn’t thinking anything, just hoping.

On the other side of the door is a pizza box. Gracie has enough time to see arms wrapped around the pizza box – and legs sticking out from underneath it – and then the pizza box has shoved its way in, followed by Helena.

“I brought food,” she says, beaming and proud of herself. Gracie thinks about alley cats again. Thinks about dead things, and gifts, and pride in a kill. Slowly she steps back from the door, fingers curling around the frame, and watches as Helena bounces into the kitchen and sets the box down. There’s a relief in seeing her in Gracie’s apartment, alive and unharmed; Gracie’s eyes are still red from crying, a little bit, and she is just _relieved_. It has only been a day and she is relieved – the one absence of Helena is the tug at a curtain, revealing the unreality of the play. This is all so fragile. It is all Gracie has, and it is fragile, but Helena is here and alive and she brought a pizza box. Before she can stop herself she’s closed the door, followed Helena across the room. When Helena turns around Gracie throws her arms around her, swallowing the smaller woman whole, her arms a hungry mouth.

Helena stiffens in surprise but then she’s wrapped her arms around Gracie too, some parasitic hungry thing, and they stay wrapped together in the middle of Gracie’s tiny kitchen for a while. _I’m glad you’re here_ , Gracie thinks, sending the message down her arms, through her muscles and bones and into Helena’s skin. _You don’t have to go_. Helena hums and Gracie for a second thinks it’s in response, but no: she’s just buried her face in the space between Gracie’s shoulder and neck and is seemingly content to stay there. Her hair is tickling Gracie’s nose.

“I was afraid,” Gracie whispers into the cloud of hair; it feels like her secrets will be trapped, with no access to the open air of her apartment. Like her words aren’t real coming out of her mouth, like Helena will catch them. “I thought you weren’t coming back.” (Her voice cracks on the last word. There is so much truth, maybe too much.)

“I won’t leave,” Helena murmurs, words buzzing against Gracie’s skin, flies hitting a light and winking out like stars. “We are family now. Family should _never_ leave family.”

They stay tangled together long enough for their breathing to settle in, Gracie breathing in her own stale breath from Helena’s hair and Helena inhaling Gracie’s dead skin. But then Helena starts to squirm, and: Gracie lets her go.

“Food,” Helena says, and Gracie nods quick sharp, says, “Food.”

They have to eat it out of the box, because Gracie doesn’t have enough plates, but somehow they end up on the couch and the bone of Helena’s knee jabs into Gracie’s leg as she tells another story – about a restaurant she went to, once, and how you should _never_ add sugar to Jell-O.

But in the story Helena is alone, which Gracie thinks is sad. Helena keeps pausing in her story to lick pizza sauce off her hands, like cleaning bloodstains, and Gracie can see her too easily in a diner, because it’s like seeing herself there: alone. The bright red color of the Jell-O, like a torn-open body. There should be someone there across from you. You should have a family.

Everyone, Gracie thinks, deserves a family.

Well. Not everyone.

She’s distracted by the thought by the sudden thud of weight of Helena’s head in her lap; Helena is grinning toothily at her, hair spread out like a fluorescent halo around her head. Just yesterday they’d barely touched at all. Seems like as soon as Gracie said “go” Helena was ready to climb over her like a vine on a wall.

She looks at home there, in Gracie’s lap, on Gracie’s couch, in Gracie’s apartment. In Gracie’s life, she looks at home. Slowly Gracie reaches out and twines one of those sallow yellow curls around her finger, lets the growth of Helena on her complete itself. Helena tracks the motion of Gracie’s finger with her eyes, reaches up, tugs lightly on Gracie’s own hair. She smiles at Gracie, secretive; between her fingers, the coil of Gracie’s hair rests like old blood.

* * *

Gracie eventually disentangles herself so she can get her computer, and they end up curled together watching reruns of a cartoon Gracie is pretty sure was on when she was younger. Something about a little girl who can talk to angels – so many angels, and all of them are her friends.

“They always scared me,” Gracie murmurs sleepily into the back of Helena’s neck, from where they’ve melted together – it’s a good thing Helena is small, or both of them would fall off the couch.

Helena hums a confused sound, and Gracie closes her eyes and tells the dark: “The angels.” The image of one of them is burned into her eyelids: a vague, shining figure, all light. She can’t see anything human in it; when she tries to look at it directly, it fades until it’s gone.

“I’ll protect you,” Helena murmurs back, the sound a low buzz under the cheery cartoon music. “From the angels.” Gracie can hear a smile in Helena’s voice, nudges her with an elbow, mutters “ _Brat_ ” in a poor imitation of Helena’s accent. Helena’s laughter shakes the both of them, rumbling under the high-pitched falsetto of the girl onscreen: _She’s not_ angry _, she’s just an angel._ The eight-year-old has put herself between the shining figure and the angry-looking woman, chin jutted out in animated defiance. You must be very brave, Gracie thinks, to look at humanity and the divine and choose the divine. Gracie never did. She’s not sure she could.

But onscreen the villain – so obviously a villain, long dark hair and dressed all in black – is beaten by what Gracie assumes is the power of friendship; the angels take the girl out for ice cream and the picture begins to blur as Gracie’s eyelids blink: closed…opened closed, closed—

When she wakes up, it’s with a screamingly stiff neck. She’s alone on the couch, her computer closed, sunlight doing its best to pour through her one dusty window. She sits up, groans at the pain that goes rattling down her spine.

At her kitchen table Helena is sitting and licking the powdered sugar off a donut, her tongue pink like a cat’s in the middle of all the sugar. She says something muffled that sounds like “hello,” or maybe “harlgraf.” Her mouth is filled with dough, and Gracie is tired. She watches with sleep-blurred eyes as Helena swallows her mouthful, the way the chewed-up donut pushes out the skin of her throat as it goes down.

“Hello,” Helena says again. “I got breakfast.” Gracie pulls herself off the couch, shuffles her way over to her table. Takes the other chair. Takes a donut. It’s slightly smashed, and the frosting is pink. She hasn’t had donuts in—

—years.

“Do you have to work,” Helena asks unconcernedly, distracted with cleaning all the sugar off of her next donut. Gracie runs through her schedule in her mind, thinks: yes.

“Yes,” she says sadly, nibbles at the edge of her donut. It tastes like sugar, and lying, blatantly artificial. “Do you?”

Helena shrugs, switches the licked-clean donut to the other hand to tidily lick the sugar off of her fingers. “No,” she says. “I can find money.” She leaves the subject there and shoves the entire donut into her mouth, whole. It’s reminiscent of a snake, or something else that swallows its prey whole. The donut in Gracie’s hand is limp with grease and barely eaten in comparison. Gracie stares at it with her mouth twisted up at the corners –Helena’s moved on to the next donut in the box in the meantime, is gleefully smearing chocolate all around her face. Gracie puts the donut down on the table (surreptitiously wiping her hand on her skirt, to get rid of the grease) and wanders to the kitchen counter, starts opening drawers.

Most of them are empty. There’s the rhythmic chewing sound of Helena picking off individual sprinkles from her donut with her teeth, providing some sort of dull percussion to the noise of opening drawers. Empty, empty, empty – there, taped to the inside of the fourth drawer. Gracie picks the tape off, picks up the object inside and moves back to the table to put it between Helena and the donut box (much to Helena’s displeasure).

“It’s a key,” she says, looking at its spikes to avoid meeting Helena’s eyes. “That way, you don’t have to…” She trails off, the word _go_ on her tongue like a smear of frosting. Helena’s hand curls around the key and slides it into her pocket, fast, as if Gracie will take it away if Helena doesn’t move quickly enough. That’s not the sort of offer this is. She doesn’t blame Helena for thinking of running, though, not when Gracie’s limbs are still foxes dreaming of hounds.

“Thank you,” Helena says, softly, and Gracie looks up to meet Helena’s eyes – finds them soft and sad and afraid.

“You don’t have to go,” Gracie says, “if you don’t want to,” and she smiles, tentative.

It is something of a victory, when Helena smiles back.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [warnings: abuse mentions, death mentions, slight anatomy mention]

It becomes routine too easily – Helena slumbering on the couch when Gracie wakes up, or waiting by Gracie’s work with two bags of Chinese takeout that are still warm when they make it up the stairs. Gracie’s life is a hollow for Helena to settle in, the tree that aches for mistletoe to define it. In the night they whisper secrets back and forth – Helena was raised in a convent in Ukraine, Helena’s foster father brought her to Canada, Helena ran away from him, Helena ran away for a long time. Pause. Then she came here. Helena says, _Tomas hit me_. Gracie says, _my father hit me too._ Her hands find Helena’s, under the blankets in Gracie’s bed in the dark. The two of them, lying next to each other in Gracie’s bed in the dark.

Too easy. Too sweet. Helena’s sallow blonde hairs are tangled in Gracie’s hairbrush, and Gracie knows now the sound of Helena’s heart pounding away on the right side of her ribcage; Gracie gets a raise at work, passes exams; the news stops talking about murder, starts talking about some businessman’s heart attack on a private jet. Gracie watches the news with the weight of Helena’s head on her thighs, slowly putting her legs to sleep. In her lap Helena twitches, slow jerking movements from time to time like a restless dog. Gracie tangles her fingers in Helena’s hair, moves them in a slow circle; Helena shudders and stills.

“He deserved it,” she whispers, the sound cutting like a razor blade through the newscasters’ bickering. The businessman’s picture grins out at them from the screen, skeletally smug, and Helena keeps going with some wine-sour religious fervor, “all of them deserve it, Grace, they are all bad men.”

In the back of Gracie’s mind, there is a basement. At the bottom of this basement lies something that could have been her father once, beneath layers of bruises and caked-on blood. All of them deserve it. They are all bad men. Gracie doesn’t know much about politics, but she knows that corporations like that deny lifesaving treatments, take children from their homes, lie and steal and cheat. What if he has a family, a daughter he has loved too much or not enough? If Gracie could have pressed a button and let him die—

She inhales, sharp. Some screaming hunger is clawing at her ribs, the pressure of it hot and insistent, _break the world to keep it from breaking you_. She won’t. She can’t. She’s going to keep her head down and maybe, if she’s lucky, make something for herself; she’s not – she wouldn’t – she can’t. So.

Helena’s head bumps against Gracie’s fingers and she keeps scratching, absentmindedly. But the spell’s broken; Helena won’t lie still, keeps twitching and twitching, eyes locked mesmerized on the television screen. In Gracie’s chest, something is howling.

* * *

Helena disappears for three days.

At the time, it is not “three days” – at the time it is Gracie coming home to Helena gone, Gracie waking up with Helena gone, Gracie eating breakfast with Helena gone, Helena gone, Helena gone. An endless litany of small hungers. This time she has faith that Helena will come back – Helena still has Gracie’s key, didn’t leave on purpose – but it doesn’t stop her from worrying. She watches the news endlessly, holding her breath, waiting for Helena’s face. Woman stabbed in back alley. Woman dead. A phone ringing – where? Helena has no family, she’s told Gracie over and over. Nobody would call Gracie. Nobody would know to.

She watches the news like keeping vigil, waiting. She calls in sick to work and huddles in a blanket on the couch; it smells like Gracie’s shower gel, the smell doubled. The news blares on, says, _another man found dead_ – Gracie’s heart kicks up, stupidly. It’s not Helena. Helena is coming back, she wouldn’t leave. She _promised_.

Gracie passes the time by doing her homework online, but – the textbook is telling her about the heart, the way it’s all cut-open muscle, and it’s making Gracie sick. She skims over the section – the knotted ropes of pulmonary arteries and veins, the way it helps you breathe, how the heart is located on the left side of the body except sometimes in – no, she can’t do it. She slams the book shut, looks at the television guiltily. Nothing.

The second day: she goes into work. Helena isn’t dead. Helena is coming back _. Did you hear a woman died,_ hisses one of Gracie’s coworkers – the blonde one who’s always dressed like she’s about to go jogging. Her name ends with a Y and Gracie doesn’t ever talk to her; she guesses now that there’s gossip, murder, bodies, gossip, death, gossip, corpses on the ground Gracie is good enough to speak to. Oh, god, Helena.

“You okay there, honey?” asks Aynsley – Bethany – Charity – and Gracie nods her head, quick movement. Don’t say anything. Keep your head down.

“Yes,” she says quickly. “Did they say – where? Or who she was?” Her voice is wavering, too high, too shrill, she knows she’s radiating fear, they can always tell when she’s afraid and that only makes it worse because predators love prey and Gracie can’t help herself, basement tonight for sure—

Daisy clicks her tongue sympathetically, the noise like a gunshot, and Gracie jumps back into herself. The blonde eyes Gracie skeptically but shrugs, says, “Some business bitch – ooh, sorry for the language, sweetie – up in the high-class districts. Don’t worry, that killer’s not coming _here_.”

“All of them are sinners,” Gracie mutters fast, under her breath, and when Everly makes a confused noise Gracie shakes her head quickly and says, “Thank you.”

“Be careful out there,” Felicity – god, Gracie should probably know this woman’s _name_ – says, and Gracie smiles in something that is more of a grimace and makes her way to the other end of the store. Not Helena. Helena is fine. Helena is coming back. Somewhere out there a woman is dead but she probably did something bad to deserve it. Helena hasn’t done anything bad. Helena saved Gracie’s life. She’s fine.

Gracie goes home and falls asleep on the couch to the flickering of the television, the low susurrus of newscasters and commercials. All night she dozes; all night she waits for the opening of a door, the light tapping of footsteps that never come.

On the third day, Helena rises.

But first, Gracie wakes up. The made-up (made up) women on her screen are looking solemnly at the camera, at each other, saying something about _patterns_ and _expert witness_ and nothing about Helena at all. Gracie’s so stupid. Helena is _fine_ , except – she hasn’t really left Gracie’s apartment since Gracie gave her a key, except to vanish and bring back food. She can’t think of a reason why Helena would _leave_ , and that’s what makes the whole thing so frightening.

Gracie slouches off the couch and rummages in her fridge, grabs a bottle of milk and sips from it as she goes back to the couch. Maybe she’ll take today off, too. Her stomach hurts so badly from stress she thinks she’s going to be sick. What do you do, when the person you’ve built your life around vanishes? What do you do, but wait for them to come home? What do you do—

What—

What do you—

Gracie’s frozen, staring at the screen. It’s cut away; the newscasters are talking solemnly with one another, debating the merits of some point, saying _good point_ and _knows her best_ and _serial killer_ over and over, _killer killer killer_ and Gracie keeps thinking cut back, cut back, I don’t care, cut _back_ —

They cut back, and Gracie sinks down onto the couch, everything else forgotten.

The woman onscreen has Helena’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You win a special prize if you catch all the references to the show in this chapter. Or in the fic overall.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter! Thank you so much for reading -- as always, please comment + kudos if you enjoyed. I was so glad to see other people cared about Gracie and Helena's relationship as much as me! Love you, Gracie Squad! :D
> 
> [warnings: several abuse mentions]

Her name is Sarah Manning, and she is the “expert witness” the news people have been talking about.

Her name is Sarah Manning. If she says “my sister” one more time, Gracie is going to throw up.

Helena told Gracie she didn’t have a family. Over and over, she said _I am alone_ , said _there has never been anyone_ , said—

Said _we can’t be sisters_. Called Gracie _brata_ instead, never told Gracie why. And now she is gone, and onscreen Sarah-Manning-expert-witness is looking into the news camera with eyes that are tired and old and not quite Helena’s eyes and saying, “She did it in my city too, kept killin’ people and thinking she was—” she pauses, closes her eyes, gives one shake of the head, “thinkin’ she was doing the right thing.” Her voice is rough, British, and Gracie hates her irrationally. Sarah’s in the right, isn’t she? Helena is a killer, isn’t she? Why is she so _angry_ that Sarah is looking at her through the screen like she’s so tired, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, and saying words like _psychopath?_

She can’t quite admit it to herself, but she’s angry because Helena has a sister. This whole time, sleeping on Gracie's couch, telling Gracie the two of them were family — this whole time, Helena had a sister. Helena had a family, this whole time, and that if Gracie focuses on that she does not have to watch the footage play on a feedback loop, the bodies, the bodies. Gracie watches Sarah say  _killer_  over and over, Helena’s mouth wrapped around Helena’s words, and feels shock hit her again and again like punches in the chest. Helena is a killer, and she has a family, and Gracie's not sure which one is the greater betrayal.

Sarah opens her mouth to say more, but her picture cuts out: BREAKING NEWS, blares the screen. Breaking news, someone else is dead. The picture they show is a man near Gracie’s age, grinning out from an old photograph, looking happy. Breaking news. Breaking news. Breaking.

Gracie’s breath shudders out of her. She reaches for the phone.

* * *

Sarah Manning has ordered tea and is staring at it like it has information she wants, and she’s going to punch it until it confesses. Gracie, who has information that Sarah probably wants, feels distinctly nauseous looking at her from across the coffeeshop. But she was the one who wanted to meet her, and she was the one who wanted to meet here, so she has no one to blame but herself. She sucks in a breath, ducks her head down, and quickly strides through the coffeeshop until she can slide into the seat across the table from Sarah.

“Hello,” she says, quiet and unable to make eye contact.

“Hey,” says Sarah. Her voice sounds softer than it did on television, clothing that’s been broken in – made faded and full of holes by use. There is just enough of Helena in her vowels to make Gracie’s heart ache. “You’re Grace. The girl who called over the phone, yeah? About my – about the – shit.”

It’s slightly comforting to hear that Sarah sounds just as uncomfortable as Gracie feels.

“About the news,” she pipes up helpfully, looking quickly at Sarah’s face and then back down again before she can see any sign of confirmation. Her hands are folded neatly on the table. It’s not very interesting; she grabs a handful of sugar packets and begins ripping them into methodical pieces. Sugar scatters everywhere.

“She used to eat them whole,” Sarah says hollowly. “Just pour ‘em down her throat. Said she liked sweet things, didn’t know why anyone would waste their time with the other parts.”

It sounds like her. Gracie finds enough bravery to look up, meet Sarah’s eyes. Helena’s eyes. Sarah’s eyes, that aren’t Helena’s eyes.

“If she’s your sister,” she says, sounding more angry than she wants to but not as angry as she feels, “how could you turn on her like that? Family should – family should never leave family.”

(Helena’s words taste strange in her mouth.)

Sarah shakes her head, back and forth and back and forth. She takes a sip of tea, makes a face – Gracie almost laughs at it, hysterical, remembering the face Helena had made when Gracie had explained Hawaiian pizza – reaches for the sugar packets, watches her own hand falter before they get there. She wraps both of her hands around her mug instead.

“She killed my boyfriend,” Sarah says quietly, and Gracie goes completely still. “He was a twat, the worst, he’d hit me and I’d come home bruised up and Helena would – _look_ at me, like all I had to do was say go and she’d tear the world in two.”

“She look at you like that, now,” she says, voice tilting up at the end enough to make it a question, and then she mutters “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

“One night we’re at home – foster mum’s out somewhere, we’re watchin’ some cartoon or whatever and Helena’s—” she gestures vaguely, and Gracie has no idea what she means, “you know, and there’s this bangin’ on the door, and it’s him.”

Gracie holds her breath, picturing it. Helena with her eyes dead, and this man like a great black shadow, this man like a father roaring. Sarah maybe not quite so tired, falling back and back and back, not wanting the fist, not wanting the belt, not wanting the basement. Please don’t hurt me. Please.

“He shoves his way in, screamin’ about me doin’ – somethin’, I don’t remember, and before I know it he’s got my throat in his fist and I can’t breathe.” Sarah’s barely talking to Gracie anymore, watching her fingers around the mug like they’re fascinating. Across the table the pile of ripped sugar packets is only growing, but now Gracie can’t stop looking at Sarah, watching each of Helena’s hurts flicker in the corners of her face.

“Then there’s this _crack_ and he lets go, and there’s another crack and another one and when I can breathe again…”

“When I can breathe again,” Sarah whispers, “he’s dead, and Helena’s looking at me, looking at me like – like—”

They both sit there in silence.

“I don’t know where she is,” Gracie says, because that’s the closest she can come to confession. Or maybe the closest to saying: _I’m sorry that your sister left you, I didn’t mean to take her. She told me you never existed. She tried to kill you too, in the end._

“Grace,” Sarah says, and Gracie blurts, “It’s Gracie.”

“Grace isn’t me,” she whispers. It isn’t. Maybe it never was. More than that, the sound of that name, the sound of the person Helena thinks Gracie is -- that name, on Sarah’s tongue, is more than Gracie can stand.

“Gracie,” Sarah says again. “You care about her a lot, right?”

Gracie nods, silent, thinking about the way Helena wheezes when she’s asleep, how well she had fit in Gracie’s arms.

“The problem is, she cares about you too,” Sarah says. “She cares about people too much, okay, she doesn’t know how to stop. She’s sick in the head, and it makes her want to hurt people. It makes her love people so much and not understand why they would love anyone else.”

“I don’t love anyone else,” Gracie whispers, “she’s all I have,” and she’s said too much and now she’s crying and she didn’t mean to tell Sarah that she knew Helena, didn’t mean to mess up. That wasn’t – she’s so _stupid_ , and—

“People are dead,” Sarah says, exhausted, too patient.

“I _know_ ,” Gracie whines through tears, sounding like the child she’s never gotten the chance to be; she swipes at her eye with the back of her hand but only succeeds in smearing tears around her face. “People are dead and she called me _family_ and I’m not like you, I’ve never had a family before.”

“When we found each other again, after years and years in bloody foster homes, she called me _sestra_ ,” Sarah says, a little too wounded to be conversational. “When I told her I knew what she was doing, that I was gonna turn her into the cops, she said I wasn’t her family anymore. Said she’d never had a family. Like having a family was something she could get rid of once she got bored.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, “you don’t get how sorry I am – shit, you’re just a _kid_ , Gracie, this isn’t something you should have to do. But you have to tell us where she is, so she can get help.”

Gracie thinks about the cartoon she’d watched with Helena, the little girl looking at humanity and the divine and choosing the divine – even though the angels hurt people, sometimes, even though they were too bright to look at head-on. She didn’t think she could be that brave. She still doesn’t know. Is it brave at all?

“I’m not you,” Gracie says, voice trembling with fear and sadness and anger, “and I’m not going to fix your mistakes. You don’t get to – save me, and let yourself think that you saved yourself, and Helena. You _left_ her, and she chose _me_ , and I’m not going to just be the next family that abandons her.”

She stands up; the chair screeches protest on the floor, and Gracie is shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “For you and for her and for me.”

She pauses, watches her fingers clench and unclench on the tabletop instead of looking at Sarah’s face; she pulls herself together, and when she talks again her words are polite and hollow.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, Ms. Manning,” she says, staring fixedly at the tabletop. “But I don’t know the woman you’re describing, and I don’t know where she is.”

She turns on her heel and leaves, hair billowing around her; she doesn’t look back, but she knows she’s leaving Sarah behind her, alone but for torn-open sugar packets and her own torn-open heart.

* * *

Gracie walks all the way back to the apartment with her heart in her throat, her heart screaming _Helena has killed people, Helena has killed people, you said you weren’t going to turn her in but she’s killed people and she could kill you too_. Her mind is flashing images, Helena holding the switch blade, Helena holding Gracie’s hand, the hollow look in her eyes when she’d knocked the man unconscious in the back alley, the way she’d walked Gracie all the way home.

She doesn’t know what to do. Turn Helena in? Let the police take her away, throw her in jail or slide a needle into her veins until she falls to the ground like a rag doll? Let Helena stay, and keep her head down the way she always does, pretend that nobody is dying, pretend that if they are dying they deserve it? Sit Helena down and say _you have to stop, I won’t go to the police but someone will catch you eventually you have to_ stop, _please, stop_ —

She doesn’t know. She has no idea what to do. The only certainty is that Helena isn’t dead – the amount of bodies popping up on the news say that much. She’s been busy, and Gracie was sitting in their – her apartment, hoping Helena was _safe_. She wants to cry, she wants to punch something, she wants to throw up. Instead she climbs the stairs, one after the other. Helena has killed so many people. There is so much blood on Helena’s hands.

When Gracie reaches the floor her apartment’s on she’s almost unsurprised to see Helena in the doorway, looking at Gracie like Gracie is a sunrise. Or maybe like she’s Helena’s sister. Despite herself she remembers the second time she met Helena – the image of Helena standing in the alley mouth, between the alley’s teeth, waiting for Gracie to turn around and see her.

Well, Gracie sees her now.

“Grace,” Helena breathes, beaming, “you are alright, I was worried when you were not here.”

“Yes,” Gracie says, “I’m fine,” and pushes her way past Helena into the apartment. Helena looks at her, puzzled, and trails after her like a lonely ghost. Like a hungry ghost. Like someone hungry for ghosts. Gracie thinks she’s shaking. Doesn’t know. Helena is circling, circling, circling, and Gracie wonders how she has never noticed that Helena looks starving.

“I brought food,” Helena says slowly, “I am sorry that I was…gone…for so long, but I had to get money. For food.”

She smiles bigger, like this is explanation enough. On cue, Gracie’s stomach roars, hungry and hungry and hungry, just as hungry as Helena is. Helena looks at her and laughs, the sound young and innocent and Helena has killed a man. Helena has killed people. Helena is grinning at Gracie, waiting for Gracie to grin back; waiting for Gracie to laugh at the joke. The joke of the two of them.

“It’s okay,” she says, like a liar. A smile stretches its way across her face. She turns her back on Helena, walks over to the couch, sits down – her legs are too weak to hold her anymore. Behind her she can hear the creaking of footsteps, and Helena throws herself onto the couch, across Gracie’s lap. She reaches out and curls strands of Gracie’s hair around her fingers, the color of it like blood on Helena’s hands.

“I’m sorry I left,” Helena says, “but I am back now, I promise. Family does not leave family. We will never be separate.”

She stares at the hair wrapped around her knuckles like she is hungry, hungrier than anything Gracie has ever known, an open mouth that will devour her whole if she’d only let it.

 _I know who you are,_ say the words in Gracie’s throat, the words between her teeth. _I know what you are._

She says nothing. Gracie swallows her words down; in her lap, the serial killer looks at her and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> We live in cities you'll never see on screen  
> Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things  
> Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams  
> And you know, we're on each other's team  
> \--"Team," Lorde
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos + comments if you enjoyed!


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